We leave Akureyri for the short drive to Arskogsandur where we take the 19:30 ferry, the Saevar over to Hrísey. Everything is enveloped in a dense and chilly fog, we can see nothing from the boat nor, once on the island, from the small house we stay in. The house is old, a white-painted tar-paper-over-wood affair with a green corrugated metal roof. It sits a couple yards back from the dirt road to the garbage dump at the far east end of the main village. Behind the main four-square house is an adjoining shed that is Jón’s workshop. Jón is my ex’s father, a retired fisherman. He also has a 1-1/2 ton fishing boat on the island — it’s not yet out in the water this season. He doesn’t use it for commercial fishing anymore, as he sold his quota of fish to take, but he does go out with family visitors to get fish for making into harfiskur, a fish jerky. His wife Helga is getting on in years, fourteen years Jón’s senior, and not well, so he may not get up to the island from their home in Reykjavík at all this summer, probably the first time in 20 years that they have not spent most their summers there in this little house.
On the ferry ride over and the walk to the house, at least ten people inquired as to when he would make it up this summer. Next door is Alda’s concrete house. Alda is 84 and has lived alone in her house for years. Even though we are at 65 degrees 50 minutes north latitude — that’s about 30 km shy of the Arctic Circle — she has a small greenhouse in her front yard (sheltered from the north wind) where she grows the most extraordinary roses I’ve ever seen. In the summer the whole glass house is bursting with blossoms — some are almost a foot across! She’s been having trouble with her feet, and was snowbound for five weeks during this past winter. The people in the village check on her and bring groceries, but it is getting more difficult for her. Still, she cheerily shows off her roses to whomever might happen by and want to see them. I had planned to make the long walk to the north end of the island tonight, the actual solstice evening. But I am too tired after pushing a huge wheelbarrow full of food, clothes, a large color tv, Loki, and a barbecue from the dock to the house to do so. It will have to wait until tomorrow. Later, friends, Hoffí and Kristín join us from Reykjavík for the weekend. So, instead of a walk, I mix some bad screwdrivers with some bad vodka and we watch a bad film on a bad tv — of all possible things to do on a small island in the Arctic Circle on the summer solstice …